Saturday, October 04, 2014

"Governor says he responded to every allegation but was misled by leaders."

The title is from a headline in the ADN. [The paper and online editions have different headlines and different dates.]

“Every time I heard an allegation, every time I
got an allegation or my office did, we investigated that with guard
leadership,” Parnell said even as he acknowledged the same leadership
turned out to be the cause of some of the guard's biggest problems."

We asked the fox how the hens were doing.

Sort
of like how he investigated the claims of the oil companies that they
needed a tax break so they could increase production and create more
jobs.

Good intentions are important, but our Governor
was simply unable to get to the heart of matters for four years. You
need more than intentions. You need to be able to figure out what's
going on and then correct it.

For four years the
governor has heard about problems at the National Guard. Often such
complaints come from people whose credibility may be questionable to
people in authority, which, of course, doesn't invalidate their claims.
It just makes it harder for them to get people to listen.

But
in this case the people who complained to the governor were people with
credibility. Chaplains. Officers in the guard. A senior politician
from the governor's party.

What is revealed in this
case is that the governor is, like Don Young said, Captain Zero. He's
an empty shell. He simply doesn't have the ability to judge people - he
listened to Katkus and not to Katkus' critics. He doesn't know how to
investigate and find the facts. He got bamboozled for four years by the
likes of Katkus. (If you were to actually meet Katkus, you'd find this
even more amazing.)

The National Guard scandal is all
the more outrageous because Parnell made ending domestic violence one of
his top priorities - but when it was waved in front of his face for
four years, he didn't see it. Or know what to do about it. [OK, he'll
say I did everything I could but there wasn't evidence. That answer
gives Parnell a fail on this question. A more alert and serious
governor would have done something much sooner. The head of the
National Guard is an appointed position and serves at the pleasure of
the governor.]

And this is the governor who told us we
needed to pass SB 21 giving the oil companies a $2 billion a year tax
cut because the tax was hindering oil production and costing the state
jobs. (If he had done the math, he would have known that for $2 billion
a year he could have given every unemployed Alaskan a decent paying
job.) And he fought against the referendum to repeal SB 21 saying it
would cost the state oil revenue and jobs.

We
don't have a governor, we have a puppet. He only knows what to do when
one of his puppeteers tells him what to do. His "Choose Respect"
campaign to end domestic violence was a poor marketing campaign. The
scary thing is that I believe Parnell thought it had substance. (There
were some substantive actions, but only because a non-profit that working with state agencies had already developed a statewide plan and the governor's task force was able to adopt some of that.)

But
it seems the governor is a good representative of the voters of Alaska
who continue to believe Parnell's promises and continue to elect
Republican majorities in the house and senate. And continue to buy the
Republican brand for our US Representative. The majority of voters seem
to be swayed by symbols and not by substance. Perhaps the so-called
Unity Party with Walker an Mallot will change things. I think just the
change itself will allow for a little different direction, but how long
will it last? And if he wins, how will Walker's socially conservative
values play out after the election? Stay tuned.

I
realize this is not my normal style. But this situation is so
outrageous, even I have to call it out harshly. This is a clear fail on
the part of the governor. There are no shades of gray here.

1 comment:

It bothers me that he doesn't accept responsibility for anything negative and just blames other people who in many cases, he had hand picked. They have to know that to accept a job offer from him that they are expendable.

This happened under his watch and Alaska needs a better governor. Dodge and blame is his M.O. When are enough people going to see this and act upon it?

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About Me

I started this blog just to find out what the blogworld was all about. I figured I needed to actually blog, not just read other people's blogs, to understand how it works, and what ways it could be used. This is all experimental. A learning exercise for me. It's turning out to be a look at one person's (mine) life based in Anchorage. With occasional trips away.
UPDATE July 6, 2015: Here's a post that discusses my evasiveness in this profile - it's intentional.